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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

"Elf" is composed of one-liners throughout the movie. These unique and hilarious phrases differentiate "Elf" from other holiday movies (and comedies) because it makes the movie memorable. There's not one line that's funny; every one line is funny. The fish-out-of-water situations that place Buddy the Elf in New York City are heightened by lines such as:

Believing the "world's best coffee sign" on a coffee shop window: You
did it! Congratulations! World's best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody! It's
great to be here.

I'm a cotton-headed ninny-muggins.

"I'm sorry I ruined your lives, and crammed eleven cookies into the VCR."

First we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookie-dough as fast as we can, and then we'll snuggle.

Monday, April 8, 2013

The complex love story in “Sweet
Home Alabama” represents not only Melanie Carmichael/Smooter’s choice between
her current beau and her childhood sweetheart, but her choice between her
Greenville, Alabama hometown and New York.

The comparisons between the two
places and people drive the movie forward.
Will she stay with her current lifestyle or will a trip back home change
everything for her?

What would you do if you had to
choose between your current life and your past?
Would you combine them or keep them separate?

The large cast works extremely
well – and everyone has a unique personality.
No two people are the same. The
country characters are living in their high school football glory days, but
also realistic about the future. Her new
New York friends are willing to help Melanie find happiness, even if it could
mean her moving back home.

Melanie escaped her past to
discover her own path and became a fashion designer. She’s successful; much more so than any of
her high school friends. Jake Perry, her
childhood sweetheart, is the only person to almost reach her success and that
was only after realizing that if he wanted to win her back, he needed to be
more than a simple country boy.

“Sweet Home Alabama” is a movie about second
chances, love, the combination of two contrasting worlds. A must see.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

There are many great animated movies out there – for example,
“Finding Nemo,” “Cinderella,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” and most Pixar
movies. I chose to write about “The
Skeleton Dance” because I recently saw it’s a precursor to these animated
movies. It’s the beginning of animation
and the short film is still relevant and amusing today.

“The Skeleton Dance” features skeletons that are nicer than
cats (two cats hiss and spit at each other) but keep the creepy graveyard
atmosphere.

Repetition is a key element in this short. Once character would do something and the
other character would mirror it and repeat it.
Everything happened in twos (an action and then the action
repeated).

The skeleton dance itself was innovative and used
choreography staging techniques like varied heights, skeletons in the
foreground and background, and focusing on two skeletons and then bringing the
rest of the skeletons back for a group ensemble routine. One skeleton used another as a xylophone and
another used a cat as a violin, connecting the musicality to the screen.

As a short in “A Silly Symphony,” it was silly and
entertaining. Who knew skeletons were so
talented at dancing?

Sunday, March 31, 2013

“The Swan Princess” begins in a
traditional storytelling manner: The narrator introduces us to the main
characters in a once-upon-a-time format.
The rest of the movie appears to be a Disney princess movie at first
glance but it’s not. “The Swan Princess”
is not even a Disney movie – it’s made by Nest Family Entertainment and Rich
Animation Studios.

“The Swan Princess” differs from
Disney in the following ways:

The story is actually mainly from
Prince Derek’s point of view. We follow
him on his journey to find Princess Odette and we learn that he genuinely cares
for her. Disney princes vary in their
role to princesses – some are actively in the story and others are not – but Derek
is a different kind of prince. His purpose
in the movie is to find Odette and he does so because he cares for her as a
person and he can’t live without her.

Princess Odette is proactive. She constantly searches for a way out of
Rothbart’s spell. The “No Fear” song
adds to this: Odette is not afraid of danger and she’ll risk everything to
break the spell. When she was younger
and Derek and Bromley threw tomatoes at her, she threw tomatoes back at
them. Also, after Derek says that “you’re
all I ever wanted” and said to arrange the marriage, Odette asked him, “what
else?” Being treated like an object was
not all right with her. She needed to
know that he was in love with her and not her kingdom.

Derek is a prince and Odette is a
princess. Their parents want them
together to bring their kingdoms together.
Neither Derek nor Odette gains anything significant over each other by
marrying and neither loses anything significant (except for the merging of
their kingdoms). They are already equals
because they are in the same class.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Guillermo del Toro made the fantastic Pan’s Labyrinth. Here’s why the movie works so well:

1.The looks:
The moments when a character turns and looks at a space in the distance
in a serious way. These “looks” indicate
a moment when a terrible revelation occurs and the look is all about being in
that moment with the character.

2.The stoic, unbending Captain Vidal. This is a man who is merciless, unforgiving, and
has no concern for anyone but himself.
He is incredibly meticulous and lives to remain in charge.

3.Mercedes is a strong character. She is placed in a subservient position as the
servant of the Captain’s household and is a woman. She refuses to allow her status to dictate
her life and is the person the Captain depends on for running his home while
she brings food and medicine to the rebels hiding in the hills, waiting to
strike against the Captain.

4.The rebels fight back against the dictator-like
Captain. These are people who are
willing to risk their lives for a better future.

5.Haunting lullaby: The humming is mystical,
mysterious, soothing, and has a sense that it is waiting for something awful to
happen.

6.The faun: He actually grows younger throughout
the movie. At first meeting he is grown
into the walls of the labyrinth and shakes free to greet Ofelia. His movements progress from slow to quicker,
like he became young again. He also
looks younger as the movie goes on.

7.Complex characters: Every character lives for different
reasons and acts differently in similar situations. They are all their own persons; they are not
easily defined because they are all unique individuals. The character development for each character
progresses at different paces, but every character changes throughout the
movie.

8.Ofelia’s acceptance of the world, but desire to
escape it. She knows that her mother is
now pregnant after marrying the Captain and that the Captain is a cruel man who
has no consideration or fatherly compassion for Ofelia. She reads fairy tales to make her life her
own.

9.Contrast of the real and imaginary world – they
are both dark and dreary for different reasons.
The imaginary world (fairy tale world) promises hope but gives Ofelia arduous
tasks to complete before she can regain her status as Princess Moanna. The real world has no such hope for Ofelia.

10.Merging
of imaginary world and real world: Both worlds come together by the end combining
the hope of the fairy tale world and the reality of the real world.

11.The
doctor’s compassion: he treats one of the rebel’s infected legs and euthanizes
a torture victim (per the victim’s request) even though he knows that he could
be killed for such treason.

12.The
labyrinth, although the title focuses on it, is not at big of a “main character”
as you would assume. It provides the
grim backdrop for the faun’s world.
Although it is an uncertain maze, it is navigable for Ofelia because she
has choices there unlike in the real world where the Captain dictates her life.

13.The
knife 3-beat complication:

1.Mercedes chops onions with a knife in the
kitchen and rolls in in her apron for safe-keeping. She later peels vegetables with the
knife.

2.When Mercedes is caught by the Captain, she
immediately uses her knife and slits his mouth and stabs his body.

3.When she is caught by Garces, she uses her knife
as a weapon pointing at the men on the horses and then at her throat.

14.The
farmer and son with the rabbit: The Captain brutally murdered the farmer and
shot the son because they were hindrances.
He checked their story (they were shooting rabbits for their sick family
members) afterwards and felt no remorse for his actions.

15.The
broken watch that the Captain meticulously rewinds is a gift from his father
who smashed his watch on a rock when he died so that his son would know the
exact time that he died. The Captain
seems to not have any emotional ties to his father except for duty: when the
Captain is caught at the end, he wants to give his son a way to remember him
by, as his father did for him.

16.Time
period: 1944 Spain is much more exciting than present day. The clothing, mannerisms, societal roles, and
general living is foreign to us now, making us release any inhibitions and
believe in the story.

17.Second
chances and redemption – the faun gives Ofelia one more chance to do the third
step to prove that she is the long-lost princess.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

“The Princess Bride” is an
incredibly quotable movie – which is why I know almost the whole script of
it. The “inconceivable’s” and “as you
wish’s” of the movie is what makes it so memorable.

Grandson: A book?

Grandpa: That's right. When I was your age,
television was called books. And this is a special book. It was the book my
father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your
father. And today I'm gonna read it to you.

Grandpa: Oh, well, thank you very much, very
nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

Having the story-within-a-story heightens the suspense. At pivotal moments in the story, the
grandfather stops reading and we go to the grandson’s bedroom and the grandfather
reassures his grandson. He tells him
what will happen, which makes us want to watch the rest of the movie because we
want to know what happens next. If
Buttercup is not eaten by eels, then what will happen to her?

Grandpa: She doesn't get eaten
by the eels at this time.

Grandson: What?

Grandpa: The eel doesn't get
her. I'm explaining to you because you look nervous.

Grandson: I wasn't nervous.
Maybe I was a little bit "concerned" but that's not the same thing.

Vizzini is in the process of trying to start a war between two
countries, so you would think that he would have some brains behind him. However, when he engages in a battle of wits
with Westley (Man in Black at this point in the movie)…

Man in Black: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Vizzini: Wait till I get going!
Now, where was I?

Man in Black: Australia.

Vizzini: Yes, Australia. And
you must have suspected I would have known the powder's origin, so I can
clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black: You're just
stalling now.

Vizzini: You'd like to think
that, wouldn't you? You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally
strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your
strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in
studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the
poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine
in front of me.

And one last quote for you:

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

“The Green Mile” takes an
innocent man, falsely accused of murdering two girls when he was trying to save
them, and places him on death row. Tom
Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, a corrections officer who believes in John Coffey’s
(played by Michael Clark Duncan) innocence.

The inmates are all uniquely
quirky, adding intrigue to the general atmosphere of Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Mr. Jingles, the mouse that Del (one of the
inmates) kept as a pet, provided a light relief from the long days at the
Penitentiary.

There was not much to do there
but wait to die and that waiting feeling pervaded the movie from start to
finish. The climactic moment (I won’t
spoil it; although It is amazing how far some people will go for a little bit of revenge - Percy Wetmore, a new guard with a strong temper plays a key role in this part) releases the viewer from waiting, only to watch the ending scene
where we learn that Paul is still biding his time until he dies, making him essentially
on death row himself.